


Jackknife

by Tierfal



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:29:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/370019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack facilitates a future in his past.  (...time travel verbiage never gets any easier.)  Featuring jailbait!Ianto.  MAJOR spoilers through Children of Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jackknife

**Author's Note:**

> …so maybe it was just an excuse for jailbait!Ianto.
> 
> INCEPTIONNNNNN.

Sometimes time travel is a giant mindfuck.  Now is one of those times.

Jack’s angry and wounded and desperate, and maybe he’s a glutton for punishment, but all he wanted before he goes was one last look at a Cardiff from before he ruined Earth.  What happens isn’t his fault; it’s those Torchwood instincts he’s cultivated for so long— _Fix things!  Save things!  Make things right!_

The kid with his nose in the physics textbook glances both ways.  He even waited for the crossing signal to change, which Jack knows very well will still take forever a decade from the present day.  But he doesn’t see the lorry that tears around the corner and rockets down the street, and Jack does.

It’s a reflex—Jack throws his arm out in front of the young man’s chest, halting him with one neatly-tied trainer off the curb.  “Whoa, there.”

The boy startles and looks up, and Jack almost has a heart attack, which wouldn’t keep him down for long but would make this encounter rather awkward.

The truck flies past, close enough to ruffle the hair of a seventeen-year-old Ianto Jones.  He clutches his textbook a little bit closer and looks Jack up and down—which is fair, since Jack’s doing the same.  Ianto’s clothes are well-worn but well-cared for; they look significantly more collected and more mature than his face does.  It’s somehow comforting to know that it’s not just Jack—not just Torchwood, not just Canary Wharf, not just gun barrels and nightmares and cracks in people that run deeper and darker than the one through the city.  Ianto’s always been older than he should have to be.

Jack was crushed to death once.  Arguably, it wasn’t as bad as the explosion-and-concrete red carpet they laid out for him last time, but there is nothing quite like the languid inevitability of a vise that’s going to keep squeezing inward until your bones snap and then crumble, and every time you think the pressure’s too intense, your body keeps trying to persist.

That’s pretty much how his heart feels right now.

“Physics fan?” he asks, because even he can’t get away with staring at someone for fifteen uninterrupted seconds without saying something.

Ianto hesitates.  Something about the mysterious, life-saving stranger in the RAF greatcoat isn’t sitting right, strangely enough.

“Yeah,” he says slowly.  “Astrophysics, mostly, and general relativity.”

It’s an Ianto Test.  Even after the sprawling span of this “life” of his, Jack hadn’t been able to face just how much he began to miss this young man the split-second he lost him.

“My favorites,” Jack says.  He can’t stay here; can’t start this; it’s not even the legality—what’s ten years between someday-friends when he’s lived centuries, most of them passed alone?  It’s not even the paradoxes, though it should be; he can’t quite feel them, but he’s not _that_ dumb.

It’s that he knows what it is—the closest thing he can experience to death.  He knows how it feels, and if he keeps on here, he’ll make it worse.

But he can use this chance to make sure.  Just in case.

“I’d better run,” he says.  “All the random acts of life-saving and kitten-petting that I do really stack up on the agenda.”

“I’m sure,” Ianto says calmly.  “Leave time to teach some orphans how to read.”

The cheeky little bastard—Jack loves him.  Jack loves him with the tidal-wave affection and the landslide protectiveness too big for three words.

“You should leave time to go outside and meet some girls, Ianto,” Jack says.

Ianto’s eyes narrow.  He’s _almost_ himself, almost the last look Jack could bear.  “Just as a public information broadcast, I’ve been developing my own mace.”

“Not a stalker,” Jack says, “although you’d be worth it.  Don’t look at me like that.  Oh, and if we should ever meet again… make sure I listen.  There are a lot of things you’re going to say that I need to hear.”

Ianto just stares at him, presumably because Ianto is sane.

Then Ianto’s eyes widen, because Ianto is brilliant.

“Time travel is impossible,” he says, fingers tightening around the spine of the book.

“Yeah,” Jack says, flashing the blinding grin—just for a taste—as he flips open the cover of his VM.  “And aliens don’t exist.”

When he picks himself up off the ground a hundred-thousand lightyears away, he takes a deep breath and musters a smile.


End file.
